“From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak I fought with the Balrog of Morgoth… Until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountain side… Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time… The stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as a life age of the earth… But it was not the end. I felt life in me again. I’ve been sent back until my task is done.” – Gandalf

I have seen all of these movies probably a dozen times but it has been several years now since revisiting them. From memory, I always thought of The Two Towers as the weakest of the trilogy but it is still a masterpiece and a perfect film for what it is: a bridge between the beginning and the end.

It also ups the ante quite a bit and is more epic in scale, as the two final battles alone are bigger than anything we saw in the first film, apart from the intro that showed the fall of Sauron millennia earlier.

But, really, the climax to this motion picture is absolutely amazing. If you are a fan of epic battles, this does not disappoint. If you are a fan of fantasy, this should definitely satisfy your palate.

All the key players are back and that includes Sean Bean’s Boromir, who died in the previous movie. Granted, he is only in a couple of flashbacks in the Extended Edition but it’s great to see him and to get more context in regards to how Gondor is run and the relationship between Boromir, Faramir and their father.

The return of Gandalf and the shift in power away from Saruman and to him is a really great moment that helps turn the tide towards the light. Ian McKellan was superb and his character’s evolution was incredible. The continuation of his battle with the Balrog is one of my favorite cinematic moments of all-time.

It is Viggo Mortensen who steals the show, however. While he was great in the first picture and was perfectly cast, he truly shines here and anyone watching this film would want to follow him, which is great considering what his role is in the goings on of Middle Earth and how this series ends in the following film.

If you are going to watch these films, you should always watch the Extended Editions, as they provide more story, better context and a heftier helping of the meat and potatoes. The Extended Edition of The Two Towers offers a lot of extra footage that isn’t in the original theatrical version. It isn’t so much that it makes it a different film but it certainly makes it a better one.

The Two Towers is perfect. It is a masterpiece like the other two pictures in the trilogy. It is the weakest, sure, but I’d rather be the weakest film in this trilogy than the best film in the Transformers series.

Rating: 10/10Pairs well with: the other two Lord of the Rings films, as well as The Hobbit trilogy.

There probably aren’t many people alive who have seen London After Midnight, as the only surviving print of this 1927 film went up in flames during the 1965 MGM vault fire.

The version of this film that I watched was a reconstruction, which originally aired on Turner Classic Movies back in 2002. So this is a review of that and not the actual finished movie itself. So the final rating below doesn’t reflect the actual film, as I haven’t seen it.

That being said, the reconstruction was done as best as it could be with the material that was available. They worked off of the script and used production stills to represent the scenes.

While this doesn’t have the life of a moving picture and doesn’t really capture the full performance of the legendary Lon Chaney Sr., the stills do a good job of painting the right kind of picture and showing you the tone within the film.

I wasn’t crazy about the film’s score but it does feel accurate to the scores of the time when this originally came out. It just sounds a bit generic, overall.

If you are a Chaney fan, you should give this a watch because it’s as close as one can get to experiencing this film, which was considered to be one of Chaney’s greatest performances.

Hopefully, one day, another print will resurface but being that it’s been lost for 53 years, that may be very unlikely.

Recently, some footage was found but it was just scenes clipped for a trailer. Still, maybe an updated reconstruction with that footage will be edited together in the future.

Rating: 6.5/10Pairs well with: other Lon Chaney Sr. horror pictures of the 1920s.

I think that most fans of Anne Rice’s work were happy with the 1994 film version of Interview With the Vampire. It would have been nice to see her Vampire Chronicles continue with that same cast and team but its sequel, The Vampire Lestat, never really materialized.

Eventually, Rice was pushed out of the project, the studio took over and we got this abomination, 8 years later.

I remember seeing the trailer for this and almost losing my shit in the theater. How could something so perfect be followed up with something so flawed and soulless? I never really wanted to watch the movie but my girlfriend, at the time, brought it home from Blockbuster one night and I was subjected to this heinously inferior creation that set adaptations of Rice’s work back decades. In fact, we’re still waiting for more Vampire Chronicles adaptations, 16 years later.

So what’s wrong with this movie? Short answer: everything. Long answer: read the next several paragraphs.

To start, this was made without the care that Neil Jordan and Anne Rice had with Interview With the Vampire. In fact, this doesn’t even have respect for the work it is based on. It was a quick, cheap and sad attempt at cashing in on something people craved without any wherewithal of what made Interview so damn good in the first place. Frankly, I’m pretty sure they never really cared about that to begin with and chances are, the filmmakers didn’t even watch that film or they found it boring because it wasn’t littered with nu metal or rap rock songs.

This was a film that tried so fucking hard to be edgy but it failed to understand what edginess is and that it really had no place being tied to the source material, as Interview was edgy in its own way. A way that showcased its eloquence and fit within the style of what that film was. Queen of the Damned was the forced edginess that makes most people laugh like when they see wealthy white teenagers wearing t-shirts that say “fuck you” or “suck my dick”. It’s cringe edginess.

A big example of this type of cringe edginess comes in the form of the film’s music. In the books, Lestat’s music is described to be otherworldly and it’s powerful and magical enough to resurrect a long dead vampire queen from thousands of years of sleep. So how did they make this work in the film? They didn’t. Lestat’s music was nothing but Korn songs that the actor lip synced. Fucking Korn. Now I don’t hate the band but c’mon, Korn? Really?!

Also, the film was terribly cast. I guess Stuart Townsend has the look part down but he certainly didn’t have the presence of Tom Cruise’s Lestat. And really, on paper, Cruise looked miscast but he made it work and put in one of the greatest performances of his career. But we got Townsend, a guy who also failed at being a convincing Dorian Gray, another literary character of greatness. He would ruin that character a year later in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Then you have Aaliyah, the top billed star who only appears in brief glimpses and not in full until the last half hour of the movie. Her accent was terrible, her inability to act was baffling and nothing about her seemed alluring or threatening. Once her and Lestat do come together, there’s no character development to their story and there is absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. It’s really embarrassing to watch.

You also have the parliament of vampires or whatever they’re called. Most of them looked ridiculous and like they were handpicked out of a crowd at a My Chemical Romance concert, even though I’m not sure if that band even existed yet.

This movie hurts my brain. I didn’t want to revisit it but since I just recently got reacquainted with the greatness that is Interview With a Vampire, I felt that I should re-familiarize myself with this, which really is the antithesis to everything its predecessor was.

Do yourself a favor. Never watch this. It’s beyond bad. It’s not even the sort of bad that becomes good. It’s the worst kind of film and shouldn’t exist.

Rating: 2.25/10Pairs well with: other early ’00s vampire movies that were far from great like Dracula 2000 and The Breed.

I never saw this when it came out and I didn’t have much urge to, as I wasn’t invested in the video game series and it looked like a low budget action horror film that didn’t pay much attention to what the first game was. Based off of my experience playing the original Resident Evil, when I originally saw the trailer for this, I was baffled by it.

However, this has gone on to spawn a half dozen movies and is the most successful film franchise based on a video game, so I figured I’d kill 100 minutes and actually give it a watch, 16 years later.

Well, it’s not terrible but it also isn’t very good. It had some decent bits in it but most of it felt as soulless as the zombies roaming in and out of the picture.

I guess the worst part of it all was the acting. Milla Jovovich was actually pretty decent and Eric Mabius wasn’t bad but everyone else around them delivered their lines like a punch to the gut. Most of these character and the actors portraying them were pretty off putting. Michelle Rodriguez’s line delivery certainly takes the cake for acting cringe in this film.

The special effects are good when they are practical effects. The CGI employed in this is fucking terrible. From what I’ve seen from later films in the series, the creature CGI effects at least improve beyond this film. The Licker creature, which was the big bad of the movie, looked atrocious. The digital monsters looked like something from a SyFy movie but a SyFy movie when it was still 2002.

As far as a positives, I really liked the concept and the idea of the Hive, an underground tech heavy fortress controlled by an evil A.I. called the Red Queen. I felt like there was a lot that they could do with this but it was left pretty unexplored, other than a few key moments like when the task force got sliced to pieces by lasers. But this also felt like it was heavily borrowed from Cube.

This was a fast paced, fun movie. I’ll give it that. I wasn’t bored watching it or waiting for things to pick up. However, I did suffer from my mind going numb due to stupid characters making stupid decisions.

Also, another positive is that I feel like I should watch the other movies as well. I’ve never seen any of these in their entirety. I’ve seen bits and pieces of some of the sequels but I don’t even know which ones. It just seems like these movies are on FX all the time.

Anyway, I guess I’ll follow this up shortly with reviews of the other five Resident Evil movies.

Rating: 6.25/10Pairs well with: the pther Resident Evil films, as well as other horror video game films from the same era: the Silent Hill series and Doom.

“We supported you, Shinzon, when you assassinated the Senate. You told us the timing was perfect for an attack on the Federation. I don’t understand why now you delay.” – Commander Suran

A lot of people despised this movie. Well, good thing I don’t really care about what most people think because this is one of my favorite Star Trek films of all-time. I certainly have some issues with the plot but I’ll discuss that as the review rolls on.

To start, this was a really dark chapter in the Star Trek film franchise, which was definitely welcomed at the time, as the previous film, Insurrection, was a pointless romp and almost felt like a nice vacation for the Enterprise-E crew. This mirrors First Contact in its level of darkness and even eclipses it, as there aren’t a lot of funny scenes like all the Earth stuff from that movie. I guess some people didn’t like how “doom and gloom” this picture was but I dug it in the same way I really dug The Wrath of Khan, twenty years earlier than this.

The thing that really made me like this picture too was that it featured the Romulans heavily. It took ten Star Trek motion pictures to get a Romulan story and this one really setup what could have been a good trilogy of films surrounding the oncoming storm of Romulan civil war.

So many things happened in this film that changed the playing field for not just the Romulans and the Federation but also the crew of the Enterprise. I feel like this should have kicked off a trilogy within the film series, sort of like how The Wrath of Khan started its own trilogy of films surrounding the Genesis Project. I really, truly wanted to see the Enterprise with Picard fighting alongside the Titan with Riker with good Romulans on one side and bad Romulans and Remans on the other. This could have lead to massive, epic things but the film series ended with this picture. I heard that the novels that covered Riker’s time as captain on the Titan were pretty good though. I should check those out.

Anyway, I also really liked Tom Hardy as the villain Shinzon, even though I didn’t like his backstory. Shinzon was a clone of Jean-Luc Picard and was there to sort of challenge the core of who Picard is. Could he be this psychotic evil man under different circumstances? At the same time, could Shinzon be a noble and heroic character if he were raised under similar circumstances as Picard. I like how this plays out even though I felt that the clone part was incredibly cheesy and friggin’ strange.

But this also tapped into Data sort of having his own clone in the movie too, as the crew discovers an older model of Data on a remote planet. Data spends time trying to help the new android evolve and adapt beyond his simple programming and B4, this new android, is even given Data’s memories at one point and essentially carries Data inside of him.

It’s interesting that Brent Spiner, the man who plays Data, helped write the script, as this is very much a picture where Data is the focus and his journey here is his most important in the character’s history. I feel that Spiner’s inclusion in the writing process helped to enrich this part of the story in a more personal way.

I also thought that the special effects were a big step up from Insurrection, which was the first Star Trek movie to go full CGI instead of using models for the ships. This film didn’t feel as cheap as its predecessor, which came off like a “made for TV” movie for the SyFy channel.

I also loved the design of Shinzon’s battleship. That thing was sick and is one of my favorite Star Trek vessels of all-time.

I really like this film but unfortunately, it didn’t give fans the right sort of closure that they should have gotten with this exceptional cast. And for me, it left me hanging, wanting to see where the Romulan storyline could have gone.

Rating: 8/10Pairs well with: The other Next Generation films: Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Insurrection.

“Each one of these rooms has six of these doors and portals, but no matter how many different doors and portals I go through I always end up in the same three rooms.” – Jerry Whitehall

Cube²: Hypercube is a worthwhile sequel and it isn’t.

The reason why it is worthwhile is because it takes the established formula from the original Cube and expands on it and builds off of it. The rules are sort of the same but things have changed, as our abductees find themselves in a new Cube structure. Things aren’t as simple as they were before and now there is an extra time and space dynamic that makes things more timey wimey than an episode of Doctor Who.

The reason why this isn’t worthwhile is actually more than just one reason.

For starters, the film is a jumbled mess and while it introduces some cool science-y ideas and concepts, it is a giant ass paradox of paradoxes and pretty confusing at points. It is one of those movies that relies on the viewer being more than a novice at quantum physics but if you are more than a novice, it all falls apart. It’s like the writer read some amateur science blog written by someone who theorizes a lot but doesn’t actually study and test their zany theories.

Secondly, the traps in this movie are terrible and flat out suck. Every danger is some sort of shitty CGI thing. There are the shitty CGI glass pillar things that decapitate, the shitty CGI killer tesseract blender blade thingy, a shitty CGI moving wall that looks like… well, shitty CGI.

Also, you have atrocious acting. I think, overall, the acting is a step up from the first Cube but the actors who are the worst here are worse than the worst from the first movie. The main actress is okay and comes across better than anyone else in this series, thus far. Still, none of the acting is anything to write home about.

I don’t hate Cube²but I also don’t like it. It had some really interesting ideas that fell flat almost as soon as they were introduced but it did kept me engaged enough to want to see how this story panned out.

Really, I just want to know what the hell that ending was about and I want more backstory to these strange experiments. But that’s what Cube Zero, the third and final film is for.

“You failed, Michael. Want to know why? Because I’m not afraid of you. But what about you? Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid to die, Michael?” – Laurie Strode

This chapter in the Halloween franchise is the bottom of the barrel. Well, at least until Rob Zombie came along to make two films in his white trash reboot.

The only positive thing about this picture is the first fifteen minutes that show the final confrontation between Michael Myers and his sister, Laurie Strode. Jamie Lee Curtis returned for this small part and really, the build up to this fifteen minute intro should have been a film with this as the finale. Everything after their final confrontation is absolute garbage.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked Busta Rhymes going back to his days in Leaders of the New School. I also thought he did a decent job with his small role in John Singleton’s Higher Learning. However, watching him imitate Bruce Lee while using kung fu moves to best Michael Myers is just about the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen and I’ve watched some pretty shitty movies in my day. At least Busta looked like he was trying to make the best out of an atrocious script and a stupidly written character.

The basis of this film, after the decent fifteen minute intro, is about a half dozen college students that go on a reality show to “investigate” the infamous Myers house. However, Michael is there and still alive so college kids start getting shish-kababed with sharp objects galore.

The premise is dumb, the characters are even dumber and the whole idea of how a show like this would work makes no sense whatsoever. It was just an excuse to use cheaper cameras and to showcase a lot of the action with shitty head mounted webcams. It is like half normal movie and half found footage. The choppy editing between the two is a distraction and most of the webcam shots are a jumbled mess.

Fuck this movie. There really isn’t much else to say about it. Watch the first fifteen minutes and then turn it off.

And yes, this turd is getting tossed into the Cinespiria Shitometer. The results read, “Type 1 Stool: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass).”